Zalman TNN-500A Fanless PC Case Review - Heat Sink and Heat Pipes

And the best features are the ones that do not add much to the look of this case but are the most important components for a completely fan free case:

The heat pipes that transfer heat away from the CPU and AGP card

The clever design of heat sink blocks to help in that transfer

The innovative use of heat pipes to transfer heat to the heat sink blocks

The amazing body of the case, with its radiator fins, ventilation holes and thick aluminium construction that work together to dissipate all the heat transferred to it.

The first image shows a heat sink on the processor with five heat pipes coming out of it and screwed into the heat sink blocks on the case body.

The lower picture shows the heat pipes from the graphics card connected to a different set of heat sink blocks on the case body which together provide 50 watts of heat dissipation. Note that the two heat pipes here (which are included as standard) won't provide adequate cooling for anything above a GeForce 5700 Ultra 128/256 MB or a Radeon 9600XT. For any cards above these you need an optional extra two heat pipes which can be ordered from your case supplier. Zalman do however provide a range of different sized heat sink blocks to fit onto the GPUs of most standard AGP graphics cards.

If you are using a Matrox Parhelia card, and some workstation graphics cards note that the processor on the graphics card (GPU) could be substantially larger than the ones on most GeForce FX and ATI Radeon cards. It will be up to you to ensure that whatever heat sink block you fit to the GPU completely covers the GPU itself or you will risk burning it out.

The cooling fins on either side of the case to dissipate that heat (see image below).